Privacy Law Scholar’s Conference, WPF Commenter

WPF’s Pam Dixon will present review comments for this year’s Privacy Law Scholar’s Conference. The annual conference will be held this year June 1-2, in Berkeley, CA. The full PLSC schedule is here.

More about PLSC:

Dates: Thursday and Friday, June 1-2, 2017

Location: Claremont Hotel, Berkeley, CA

Co-Chairs: George Washington University Law Professor Daniel J. Solove & Berkeley School of Information & School of Law Adjunct Professor Chris Jay Hoofnagle

PLSC assembles privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss current issues and foster greater connections between academia and practice. It brings together privacy law scholars, privacy scholars from other disciplines (economics, philosophy, political science, computer science), and practitioners (industry, legal, advocacy, and government).

PLSC is a paper workshop. There are no published proceedings, and after the event, papers are not available. Because authors’ drafts are works in progress, we do not publicly release these writings, nor do we publicize them (no Tweeting, blogging, etc.), as authors’ ideas are often inchoate and need incubation for full development.

At PLSC, papers workshops are led by a “commenter” who facilitates a discussion among participants on an author’s paper. Authors are encouraged to participate in “listening” mode. There are no panels or talking head events at PLSC.

This new WPF report finds that medical identity theft is still a crime that causes great harms to its victims, and that it is growing overall in the United States; however, there’s a catch. The national consumer complaint data suggests that the crime is growing at different rates in different states and regions of the US, creating medical identity theft “hotspots.” These hotspots are important for patients, policymakers, and healthcare stakeholders to know about so as to address potential risks.

WPF has conducted original research on India's Aadhaar, a national biometric ID system, including field research in India during 2010-2014. WPF has published the original research in a peer-reviewed journal, Nature-Springer, and in Harvard-based Journal of Technology Science. The research found that systemic challenges to data protection and privacy exist in the Aadhaar system, challenges which do have potential remedies. Key lessons can be learned for both the US and the EU as biometric systems grow in popularity.